Spanish views from a small town

Yesterday, I learned of yet another type of influencer on the web. One of my students was telling me how she yet had to film the unpacking of a box of clothes she had ordered, so as to put her own haul video on TikTok. Her pronunciation at first made me think she was going to howl, which is how she was pronouncing the word. But then she wrote it down for me. I understood the concept; to make a haul from the stores is buying cheaply and largely. She then went on to show me a few samples. All of them featured women as fat as a twig, either opening boxes ordered online, or pulling clothes out of a shopping bag. All of them were promoting one store or another.  I later checked and found them on Instagram, as well. I assume they're all over the place. Now, I know that young people like to change their wardrobe often because they get tired of the same clothes, and don't want to be caught dead wearing last year's fashions. And here come these other, well-off young people and encou...

On Thursdays is when the Lidl, a German chain supermarket, rolls out its weekly specials and offers. This week it seems the offers are plants, bulbs, seeds, and other gardening stuff. I usually go on Saturday, when much of the good stuff has flown. But then, I'm not a fanatic like some.  This morning, I'd forgotten about that fact, and I drove to the Lidl to pick up a couple of things. The parking lot was jam packed. There were more cars than parking spaces. It seems that the idea of limiting people in shops is overlooked in that supermarket. I hoped some of the cars belonged to visitors to the funeral home next door, which has a small area for cars, and sometimes overflows into the Lidl's lot. But, when I went inside, it was a madhouse. I just picked up what I needed (and, yes, a small tub of primroses), waited in line, and left.  I doubt most of the people in there had received any shots, yet. The over 80's are still being called in, as are the teachers. Two who ha...

On Saturday, I did my weekly shopping in Boiro, finally. Some of the stores had new products, or changed a couple of things around. Another was comfortably the same. It felt good, getting back to routine. It's a feeling like meeting an old friend from adolescence that hasn't changed at all. You see them, and fall into the same speech patterns, the same topics, the same gestures. It's a reassuring feeling, that even though all else might change, your friend won't. What was disturbing was the amount of people on the terraces of all the bars that were open. Most had their masks pulled up, but not all. Some people were standing next to the maximum four that could sit together, acquaintances catching up. A few café owners are bad at math; fifty percent didn't look like fifty percent, unless previously the tables had been packed in like sardines. Take a Spaniard out of café life, and they wither away.  This morning dawned grey and rainy. So much for a week of nice weather...

Yesterday was quite a full day. In the morning I went to Santiago, and in the afternoon I finally had classes in my studio. It's a good thing it was Friday. On my drive up, looking around, there was nothing discernibly new. The only thing that hadn't been there was a pharmacy that had popped up. The only thing that wasn't there that had been, were the pilgrims. Normally, driving up I can see pilgrims doing the Portuguese Way of Santiago. Either in groups, or individually, in places where the Way coincides with the road, I could see dozens of them. Not this year. It may be a Jacobean Holy Year, but the Way is empty. When the Pope announced at the end of last year that the Holy Year would be extended, with its plenary indulgences, to 2022, he merely cemented the fact that the Church has forever been more involved in economics than in spirituality. Entering Santiago at around ten, it was traffic as usual. I went first to an industrial area with large stores. First, to Decathlo...

From time to time, I hit the easel with my pastels. I haven't been doing much of late, but I still like to have supplies. Last December, I ordered some from Jackson's Art in Britain, trying to get ahead of Brexit. This past month, curiosity about how it will be from now on, led me to visit its page. There are a lot of products that are out of stock. I assume that those are products that the company normally buys from European providers. I ordered a new pastel board I had never used before, and a large sheet of Art Spectrum paper I can't find in Spain, as well as a Caran d'Ache pencil in a color I didn't have. Wow. Shipping now cost around twenty-five euros. Back in December, it had cost around five. I went ahead with the order, however. These were products that I couldn't find in Spain, not even online.  I received it today, except for the pastel board, which is on back order. Apparently, it also comes from a European provider. It was always very easy to order f...

Yesterday afternoon I received a text from my cousin's daughter. He's doing a bit better, but is still in critical condition. Let's hope he can pull through. Contagion was going down throughout Spain these past couple of weeks (except in our locality), but now the numbers are starting to go skyward. Some are looking toward Germany, where schools and non-priority businesses are set to close as of tomorrow. Just in case Santiago closes again, I went to do some Christmas shopping yesterday morning and today. I had completely forgotten about it. And I have no idea what to buy the two people I love most in my life. What they need that is affordable, they already have. (What they need that has to wait for the lottery talk would be a couple of new cars, and stuff like that. And the lottery is just that: talk.) I did find a couple of things, though. If I had remembered last month, perhaps something would have been bought online. But this year, I try to buy more locally. I bought so...

This year, I think I'm actually looking forward to Christmas. Mostly because we'll be eating at home, just the three of us, and because we aren't being bombarded by "you MUST shop!!!" since November. Aside from the Christmas goodies of turrón , marzipan, polvorones , and the like being available to chew on since the end of October, it hasn't been an overly commercial year. Even the television commercials tend to insist on messages more akin to the Christmas spirit, and some remind us that life is to be lived, even if it means partaking of the company's cold cuts, like  Campofrío's. Of course, that doesn't mean that people won't forget about the reason we're told to stay home, just to go see the pretty lights, and pop into the shops, and get together with friends, because, "I've known this person all my life, and they are not infected." Sadly, the last is not always the case. I read about a couple who would always get together ...

I went to a shopping mall in Santiago this morning. It's the third time since the pandemic began that I've been. If in July, when I last went, there was almost a normal amount of people, this time, the place was mostly empty. Despite the fact that school is beginning some time between this and next week, there was not much back to school shopping being done.  Santiago is under a restriction these days. Thanks to about nine people infected at a gym, reunions of more than ten people are not allowed, and the number of people allowed to stand at bars in cafés is fifty percent of those that fit. That doesn't mean that some incoming university students won't give their private parties; they will, but they'll just have to keep the noise down if they don't want the neighbors to call the cops. Whereas before, the students wouldn't have cared, now they want to avoid fines of over a thousand euros and up.  Today, overall numbers of newly infected have gone down in our ...

Yesterday was time to start going afield. I went to the mall As Cancelas in Santiago, and my daughter went to the beach. It was hot, but the wind tamped down the temperature. I drove with my windows open, mask lying on the seat beside me. Traffic was light, even in Santiago around construction work they're doing on one of the major streets. The diversion cones had been put down back in mid-March, and not much work seems to have gotten done.  In As Cancelas underground parking lot, I found a spot right near the entrance. Normally, I have to wander around, looking for a nice spot without going down to the end. It was almost four thirty, but there were less cars than usual for that hour. I got out and put on my mask. My glasses promptly started falling off. Either the mask fogs the glasses, or it causes them to slide down my nose because of the elastic on the ears. Twenty twenty vision has something to say for it in times like these. The entrance has two automatic sliding door...

My daughter has been cleaning her room these days, and she has found a time capsule. Well, not really, but it seems like it. She has unearthed stuff from years ago, including a catalog from autumn/winter, 1993-1994. It's a catalog from the German business, Quelle, and I must have received it after ordering something from another, earlier catalog. I do remember buying some clothes from them years ago. My daughter must have had that catalog since she was a little girl, and used it like I used to use an old Sears catalog. I had no need for video games, tablets, cell phones, or other electronic diversions when I was a child. I had an old Sears catalog from God-knows-where, an old mail-order catalog my mother picked up from the trash in her office-cleaning job, and the sales flyers from the Sunday newspapers. The last, I picked up from the first floor apartment, when the tenants left the old papers by their door, ready to give to the garbage men on Thursdays.  I would pore over the ...

Those with a sweet tooth who have tried the famed hazelnut spread, Nutella, know how rich and creamy it is. Nutella is the original Italian brand, Nocilla is the Spanish version. I remember eating sandwiches of it on a vacation here when I was a child. I also remember the joy at finding Nutella in an Italian grocery shop in Boston's North End once. To me back then it was a minor miracle; a taste of vacation and summer and country air and tasty warm fresh bread and sweet goodness. But from appreciating something rich and sweet to punching people just to get a jar is a large leap. Yet, that is what happened these past couple of days in many Intermarché supermarkets in France. Food in general is more expensive in France, Nutella included. So, when the supermarket chain decided to give a 70% discount on jars that normally cost €4.70, leaving them at €1.41, droves of people made the supermarkets look the the craziest of Black Fridays in the United States.  I've never lived throu...

I remember, when I was a child, Massachusetts still had its Blue Laws on the books. Sundays were days to stay home, maybe go for a drive, but that was it. The only places open w ere the local Korean market and Dunkin' Donuts, and only in the morning. There, we could buy the Sunday paper and a hearty breakfast. Everything else was shuttered up. Sometime in the 1980's, the Blue Laws were sent into history. Any store that wanted could open between 12 and 6 PM. From doing only Sunday drives down to Quincy and Canton, and other occasional points further south of Boston, we changed to driving down to Dedham Mall and spending Sunday afternoons there. Much later, I sometimes w ould go downtown when my parents didn't feel like going out.  My family worked during the week and did its banking and shopping on Saturday mornings. While we strolled through the mall on Sunday afternoons, we would sometimes buy something, so metimes just check ou t novelties, sometimes buy somethi ng ...

July has already begun and so have the summer sales. It used to be that they began on the first day of July in all of Spain. Then, some communities advanced the date, and now they can begin almost at any time the store sees fit. Consumers this year, however, haven't seen fit yet the idea of spending extra money. There are all types of consumers. There's the kind on an extremely tight budget that only buys clothes during the summer or winter sales. And sometimes only at the stores with at least 50% discount. These are also the people who fit into standard sizes and are rail thin. Then there's the people who see something they like in a store window and enter to buy it at a discount. There's also the person who is waiting for these days to buy a specific outfit. And then there's the person who wakes up and decides to go see what's up and generally buys what they will never wear because it was at a ridiculously low price.  I'm more the hit or miss kind. The...

I went shopping with my daughter this morning for New Year's Eve clothes. Thanks to the weather, there weren't that many people, so the episode was relatively stressless. And it did give a chance to observe different shoppers, including some men who were accompanying women. Up to a point, things have changed from the days when the woman went into a shop and the man waited outside with the bags. Now the man tends to enter with the woman, but he doesn't always show much interest. My husband went with our daughter the other day and he says he loves to go shopping with her because they think alike. Both tend to know exactly what they want and go directly to where it should be with blinders on. And while he and I are different in our approach, he has no problem going shopping with me, either. Today there were men helping the women make a selection. There was a whole family of mother, father, aunt, younger son, and late adolescent son finding nice party clothes for the youngste...